Officer fires weapon during CHP freeway chase that ends with arrest at USC

LOS ANGELES - A 22-year-old man was in custody Friday following his arrest on the USC campus at the end of a chase that began in Cheviot Hills when his car was seen speeding on a shoulder of the Santa Monica (10) Freeway

The chase -- during which an officer fired his weapon, though harmlessly -- began just before 8:10 p.m. Thursday on the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway at Manning Avenue, where two California Highway Patrol officers attending to a disabled vehicle spotted the suspect’s car speeding in the right shoulder, said CHP Officer Ming Hsu. Traffic was moving about 5 mph at the time, he said.

One of the officers began chasing the car, which left the freeway and collided with several vehicles as the man headed east, Hsu said. Other officers joined the chase and, at Vermont Avenue and Adams Boulevard, an officer executed a PIT maneuver, causing the suspect’s car to spin out and temporarily stop, he said.

At that point at least one officer opened fire on the vehicle, but the suspect was not hit and drove off again, eventually settling on Exposition Boulevard, heading east to Figueroa Street, he said. There, CHP officers were confronted with a few lingering crowds as the USC-Arizona football game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was in the second quarter.

The chase ended about 8:45 p.m. on the USC campus in the area of Vermont Avenue and 37th Place, where the suspect’s car went onto a walkway and hit some landscaping, Hsu said. The man then ran away but was quickly apprehended, he said.

Broadcast video showed him, with his shirt bloodied, being taken into custody, but Hsu said the blood was not related to the chase.